


Yet & Not Yet

by momebie (katilara)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 23:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3306890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The magicians, working their way over well-worn grooves from a place made for leaving to a place made for staying, one first kiss at a time. Because for people who reuse time close and far is like already happened and not happened yet, and eventually they’ll get it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Adam wakes up early on Sunday mornings. It’s not that preparation for St. Agnes’s mass is noisy in any audible sense, but it’s noisy in a metaphysical sense. All of those people soon to arrive with all of their wishes and prayers and the lives they’re thinking about getting back to living when it’s over. Opening himself up to Cabeswater has opened him up to so much more than he expected. Sometimes it’s a blessing. Sometimes. 

He stays in bed for ten minutes, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Ronan down there in one of those pews with the brother he hates and the brother he loves. Ronan’s religion seems impossible to Adam. Not the idea of faith itself, but that Ronan, a boy made so squarely of the possible that he turned the impossible on its head time and time again, would go in for so much possibility he couldn’t touch. The thought is replaced by a sort of extra sensory tingle just over his skin that he’s learned to read as nudgings to check his mystical voicemail. He stretches, drags himself up off his mattress, and goes to the bathroom to lay tinfoil in the sink. 

Scrying has become easier with practice and it now takes little time for him to be pulled into the scene playing out in the pulse around him. This morning the first thing that comes into focus is a body on the ground. This vision is brighter and in higher contrast than most. It’s a perfect late autumn afternoon with a deep blue sky burning overhead. As everything sharpens he can make out white feathers and claws against the rust colored mountain grass. It’s one of Ronan’s night horrors. The tip of a sword comes into focus just over it, but it’s clean, clearly not used to put the thing down. 

Adam follows the sword up to a hand crowned by familiar leather bracelets and then Ronan is there in full, standing over his horror defensively. His face is hard, angrier even than it had been when he’d punched Adam’s father, and the tips of his tattoo that peek forward out of the collar of his t-shirt seem sharper than usual, venomous. His skin is streaked with gray dust and Adam can tell that he’s been crying too, which puts Adam on edge. He remembers Persephone telling him to look outside of himself, but he can’t quite shake this image of Ronan the Sword or make sense of what this might mean to Cabeswater. He just stands there, staring at Ronan as the wind whips around both of them and the horror putrifies at their feet. 

“This is it,” Ronan says to him. 

“It is,” Adam replies, wishing he knew what he was seeing, hoping to Ronan’s god that it’s not what he thinks it is. He’s afraid to turn around. Afraid to find Gansey there behind him, also in the dirt, as he’d seen him in the vision tree. Afraid of stepping too close to Ronan and his sword. Afraid of staying too far away to be protected by it. 

His fear is made useless as Ronan strides toward him purposefully and grabs Adam’s arm with his free hand. Adam knows suddenly what’s about to happen. It’s as if they’d made this pact ahead of time and his stomach tightens as Ronan leans in and kisses him on the mouth. 

Adam doesn’t mean to kiss him back, doesn’t ever mean to get this involved with the visions, but it’s impossible for him to resist it. Somehow whatever sorrow or anger or frustration has managed to pry tears from Ronan’s eyes isn’t present in his touch. It’s as if he’s negotiating a treaty between himself and Adam’s body. It’s restrained. It’s almost gentle. Adam thinks about Gansey’s tales of knights going off to battle and the favors they’d take with them. He knows then, both in and out of the vision, that he would follow Ronan anywhere, and that it was different than the way he would follow Gansey anywhere. He hasn’t worked out how different, but there will be time for that, surely.

Ronan pulls away and gives him a grim, crooked smile. “Magician,” he says, and it sounds like he meant to say something much more intimate.

Adam nods and clasps Ronan’s forearms with his hands, willing him any strength he can find, pulling it up from the ley line through his feet and his veins and trying to push it outward. Willing that they’ll all make it out alive. If anyone can bring them out of this impossible situation it’s Ronan. There’s another strong gust of wind and dust gets in his eyes. He can feel the particles of it stinging against his cheek. He screws his eyes shut and turns his head, breaking the vision. 

When the wind stops he opens them again. He’s looking at the cracked linoleum on the bathroom floor and everything around him is warm and sticky with the end of summer. A bead of sweat rolls down his shoulder and it feels like a finger trailing its way lightly over his skin. He gingerly touches his lips with a trembling hand, acutely aware that he’d just had his first kiss. It can’t count, it wasn’t real. But it felt real.

Adam slowly and carefully pulls the tinfoil out of the sink, pressing each rectangular strip of it flat together and placing them in the small cupboard underneath for later use. Then he pulls the plug in the bottom of the basin and watches the water swirl away, taking with it parts of himself that were no longer true.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s winter in Cabeswater. A proper winter with snow hanging heavy in the branches of the rustling, shivering trees and crunching beneath their feet as they all run around each other in the clearing. Gansey throws a snowball at Noah, who fades out so it sails right through him. For a few seconds he’s nothing but a laughing outline and then he’s solid again, cheering Blue on as she chases after Gansey with a handful of snow. At the edge of the treeline Adam is helping Matthew build a snowman while Aurora gives instruction. 

Ronan plucks at his t-shirt, certain he should feel cold. Instead he’s sweating with exertion and there’s a pleasant soreness building in his legs from all of the running. Happiness settles in around his shoulders. It’s a different sort of happiness than the frenetic need of racing. It’s a sort of happiness he thinks might need him as much as he needs it. 

“Jane!” Gansey says. He’s facing her, backing away with his palms up in surrender. “Jane, no!” Blue advances anyway and Noah sidles up behind Gansey, sticking his foot out so Gansey trips backwards, falling onto the ground with a thick thud. Blue slides onto her knees next to him and gives Noah a high five before both of them proceed to shovel as much snow down Gansey’s sweater as they can until he squirms away, laughing. 

Ronan has never loved six people more in his life. 

Adam carefully crunches over to him and watches the spectacle for a few minutes. “I need to get back I think,” he says. “I’ve got work tonight.” 

None of them are sure how time works in Cabeswater, but it’s always better to be on the safe side. “You wrangle the kids,” Ronan says. “I’ll get Matthew.” 

Adam nods and starts to make his unsure way across to where Blue and Noah are building another arsenal of snowballs. Gansey is still on his back in the snow, breathing heavily and grinning like an idiot. 

“Okay, pal!” Ronan says, jerking his chin toward the others as he approaches his mother and brother. “Time to head out.” 

“Will do,” Matthew says. He draws a smile into the snowman with the tip of his finger and then turns around to kiss their mother goodbye. 

Ronan ruffles his hand through Matthew’s curls as he skips past and then leans over to also kiss his mother on the cheek. “See you soon, Ma,” he says. 

Aurora wraps her arms around his shoulders and squeezes him tightly. “I look forward to it.” It’s still a rush to Ronan every time she hugs him. He’d thought he’d have to live without it for the rest of his life. It doesn’t quite feel real yet. 

Gansey and Matthew are leading the way out of the forest with Adam close behind. Noah and Blue lag long enough to give them a good running start and then they run forward past Adam, pulling the collar of his shirt open and dumping snow down his back as they go by. Adam yelps and falls over as the others disappear beyond the forest perimeter and back into the real world. 

Ronan stands over Adam, bemused. “That,” he says, “was a declaration of war.” 

Adam looks up at him, shaking out his shirt, and not unpleasantly says, “allies?”

“Allies,” Ronan replies. He reaches down for Adam to take his hand and pulls. For a few inches Adam just drags across the ground, but then his feet get purchase and he falls upward. His shoulder smacks into Ronan’s chest and their foreheads knock together. He laughs and places his cold hand flat against his forehead and then against Ronan’s, trying to soothe the pulsing pain. 

Ronan freezes, keenly aware of how close they are now, how they’re rarely this close, but unsure of how far he can push the accident. Adam doesn’t back away. He simply looks at Ronan, chin tilted in defiance, daring Ronan to move first. It’s quite possibly the most dangerous game of chicken Ronan has ever played. 

Ronan turns his head and hesitantly presses his mouth to Adam’s. He still feels hot, hotter now where he and Adam are touching, but Adam is shivering a little, so he wraps his arms around Adam’s shoulders and holds him while they kiss slowly and lightly, learning from each other. 

Adam loops his thumbs through the belt loops in Ronan’s jeans and Ronan pulls away. “Hey,” Adam says. 

“Hey,” Ronan says back. A tension he hadn’t known he was carrying unspools across his back. He feels like he should say something to mark the occasion, but no words come. Finally he settles for, “I didn’t think.”

“So nothing’s new.” 

“Asshole.” 

“Shithead.” Adam laughs and pulls away and Ronan reluctantly lets him go. 

Ronan doesn’t know what to do with this new Adam, with the building confidence and humming power, but it’s encouraging. It feels equal now, where before it just felt like an inappropriate crush he couldn’t shake, a want he’d never allow himself to voice for fear of hurting both of them. But Adam isn’t fragile. Adam doesn’t need his protection anymore. It frees him up to give so much else. 

“Should we?” Ronan asks. 

“Think?” Adam says. “Probably best not to, just get us in trouble.” He punches Ronan lightly on the shoulder and then turns to follow the others, showing Ronan that he’d understood the question after all.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s almost eight when Ronan shows up to the garage carrying a brown paper bag straining to contain the greasy food within. Adam lets him in through the raucous sliding door and then goes back to finishing placing the brake pads on a ponderous light blue minivan. 

Ronan pops down the tailgate on a raised black pick up and hops up onto it. He starts setting out the burgers and fries he brought for their dinner, sparing no interest for Adam’s work outside of when it might be finished. To Adam Ronan belongs with cars, but in a different way than Adam feels he does. It’s a neat division he’s long been aware of, those who drive and those who repair, both feeling they are more integral to the existence of the objects than the other. It’s still strange to Adam, even after the last year, that he has come to mix so easily with the drivers. Some of them, anyway. 

He wrestles the tire back onto the van and affixes the lugnuts before dropping the hideous thing down off the jacks and kicking them to the side. Then he stretches, popping his shoulders and neck and wiping his hands on his coveralls. When he turns Ronan is watching him, holding out a half unwrapped burger. Adam, who is starving, gratefully accepts it and Ronan picks up a bottle of Coke and pops it open using the side of the tailgate, which he then hands over as well. Adam checks the burger for pickles and finds it gloriously free of them. 

“Hey,” Adam says, mouth full, “no scratching the things that don’t belong to us.” 

Ronan looks over his shoulder, pretending he’s just noticed what he’s sitting on and then shrugs. “It’ll add more character.” 

Adam takes a few more wolfish bites and looks the truck up and down. There’s a tattered Confederate flag decal plastered to the passenger side door and mud plastered just about everywhere else. “I think there’s such a thing as too much character,” he says, dubiously. 

“Come here,” Ronan says. “I can scratch you too and we can see.” 

Adam takes a long pull of the Coke, letting the fizz fill his throat in place of a laugh. Of their little family Ronan has always seemed like the one least likely to waste time on someone like Adam, given that he has so little time for anything not directly relevant to his interests at all. Yet it’s Ronan who brings him dinner. It’s Ronan who comes to his apartment late at night when he’s feeling aimless and frenetic. It’s Ronan whose eyes he catches on him when he doesn’t think anyone will be looking. 

It’s unexpected, but it fills him with a small burst of pride he can’t put a name to. Not only has Ronan insinuated himself into Adam’s life, but Adam has allowed him the foothold. He still feels unknowable, but he’s trying. It’s progress. 

Adam hops up onto the tailgate and Ronan pulls the detritus of his meal over to give Adam room. They eat french fries in companionable quiet. There’s a thought tugging at the edge of Adam’s mind, one of his own, and at some point he must have stopped chewing fries and started chewing his lip. Ronan leans toward him, not enough to close the space between them, but enough to shift the truck, and says carefully, “what is it?”

“It’s not. It’s nothing mystical,” Adam says, picking up a fry for show and waving off Ronan’s concern with it. “Just normal, boring thoughts.” He emphasizes _boring_ , trying to punctuate to Ronan just how much he shouldn’t care. 

Ronan, impervious to the idea that just because you _can_ say something doesn’t mean that you _should_ says, “is it Blue?”

Adam thinks for a moment, then swallows and says, “maybe?”

Ronan nods, as if that’s explained it. He doesn’t press, which somehow makes it easier for Adam to offer.

“I guess it’s not really. I mean, I like Blue, I want to kiss her, but I can’t, or she won’t let me. Which is the same as can’t. And I, I kind of blew up at her. I shouldn’t have. The more I think about it the more it’s not really about her. I just, I want to feel like someone wants me. You know? Like I’m worth someone’s time. I want to feel _good_ for once. Simple.”

Ronan nods again, but something about his demeanor has shifted and Adam worries he’s overstepped, loaded their tenuous friendship with something it isn’t ready to hold. This is why he always brings these things to Gansey. Gansey was made for holding. Ronan was made for deflecting. 

“I’m sorry,” Adam says. “I didn’t mean-”

“No.” Ronan balls up the burger wrapper and shoves it and the empty fry container into the paper bag. “You should want to feel that way. That’s good. That’s human.”

“Because you all worry now that I’m not quite anymore?” Adam asks bitterly. 

Instead of answering the question, Ronan says, “I’m sure someone wants to kiss you. There’s like a 90% chance you should already feel worthy. I’d roll with it.” 

“That is easy for you to say.” Adam does not add, _because you’re rich_ or _because you’re you_. He also does not point out that Ronan had not said _some girl_ the way his mother always did. _Someone_. He turns the idea over in his mind.

Ronan looks away, pretending to be interested in a rusting Thunderbird at the edge of the shop, and cracks his knuckles. The lines of his tattoo shift with his neck muscles and Adam thinks how like armor those lines are. It’s no secret that the same carefully curated attitude that makes people avoid Ronan also draws them to him. Every one of them, even Blue, has teased him about the way people’s heads turn when he moves through a room. There aren’t gender lines for interest in Ronan so much as there’s a line between fear and craving. 

_Someone_.

Adam balls up his trash and adds it to the bag before hopping down off the tailgate and walking it over to the barrel by the closed up office. It’s not much distance, but it’s enough to make Ronan look small and tired, huddled over his own knees, kicking his dangling legs against the air to the beat of something only he can hear. 

It hits Adam then that they spend a lot of their time together talking, but he doesn’t have any idea how Ronan _feels_ about things that aren’t Declan or the quest or their shitty luck in Latin teachers. He has been running on the assumption that maybe Ronan just _doesn’t do feelings_ , which is stupid of him. It’s all Ronan is, raw emotion and feeling, it’s just that he wears the armor so well that he’s conned almost everyone into thinking that the thin skin they’re looking at is made of carbon instead. 

Adam walks back around the rear end of the pick up and parks himself in front of Ronan, knees almost touching Ronan’s dangling shins. He wipes his hands on his coveralls again, but they’re still covered in brake dust when he reaches up clasps the sides of Ronan’s face, turning his head so that they’re looking at each other again. His touch leaves dark smudges on Ronan’s cheeks and somehow that feels appropriate. 

“You don’t want this,” Ronan says, but he’s not really saying it to Adam. 

“Don’t you think I know what I want?” 

Ronan looks skeptical, but he doesn’t pull away. His feet stop swinging. It feels like he’s stopped breathing and all. It’s the skepticism that finally does it. Adam presses himself between Ronan’s knees and leans in to kiss him. 

It’s a foreign language all its own and Adam is acutely aware that neither of them speak it. They’re too greedy, having wanted something like this for too long. Ronan rests his hands on Adam’s lower back and something about that casual touch sends a spark through Adam. He wants more, wants all of it. He thinks of Blue. He feels guilty for thinking of Blue. Flares burst behind his closed eyelids.

Ronan leans away and inhales sharply. His hands are still pressing into Adam’s lower back. Adam had been both wrong and right. Being wanted feels good, but nothing about this feels simple.


	4. Chapter 4

Ronan’s already gone through a six pack by the time he slips out of the sanctuary into the evening. He’s burning with the alcohol and with the anger that clings to him like a second skin once the sun goes down. He’s fine mostly, he thinks. He’s _fine_ , but he shouldn’t drive, so instead of turning left toward the side street where he’s tucked the BMW he turns right toward the administration building and its small apartments. 

His foot hits every padded stair on the climb up with the building resentment that the respectful quiet he practices in his father’s well-worshipped grooves no longer allows him the clarity to collect the pieces of himself that he feels he’s constantly shedding. Eventually, he worries, there’s not going to be anything left of him at all. The thought of absence, of being nothing, terrifies him more than even his nightmares. He won’t admit it, but he’s come looking for eyes, for someone to acknowledge he’s there. 

Adam doesn’t disappoint. He opens the door after the third knock and raises an eyebrow by way of greeting. Ronan all but falls through the doorway, his shoulder sliding off Adam’s as he pushes past him and directly to the bathroom and locks himself inside. 

“Good evening, Adam!” Adam grouses through the closed door. Ronan can hear him pacing around on the other side of it, can picture him throwing his arms up dramatically as he acts out their imagined conversation. “Yes, good evening to you as well! It’s so nice to see you. How long has it been? Oh, about four hours. So long! I was beginning to worry I’d forget what you look like. So kind of you to come and remind me.” 

Ronan flushes and washes his hands. By the time he comes out again Adam has given up and curled up in the middle of his bed with their history reading. Ronan leans against the door frame. “You’re right, where are my manners? Fuck you too, Parrish.” 

“Buy me a drink first,” Adam mumbles and flips the page. 

“I’ll buy you two.” Ronan pushes away and trips across the small space, tumbling onto the mattress next to Adam. He curls around the history book on his side and stretches his fingers out flat against the thin sheets, clinging, prepared if the bed suddenly tilts on end. 

“You’d just drink them before you get here.” 

It’s not fair to do this to Adam, he knows. Ronan’s well-versed in all of the things Adam despises and fears about his father and the drinking is near the top of the list. Adam himself doesn’t drink, but he lived with it so long he also doesn’t ask Ronan why he does. Gansey is always asking Ronan about his drinking. About why he won’t stop. Gansey’s mind is brilliant and curious, it absorbs everything it can and neatly compartmentalizes it for retrieval later. He doesn’t understand that some minds defy compartmentalization, that sometimes the only way to turn them off is to drown them. Adam does understand. Or he doesn’t give a shit about Ronan’s baser instincts. Ronan’s okay with either, so long as Adam doesn’t ask him to leave. 

Adam starts to read out loud about JFK’s assassination and Ronan closes his eyes, letting Adam’s voice become the focal point. He’s tired, exhausted probably, so his local accent slips in around the edges of the words and his voice itself is hoarse. Ronan doesn’t know why Adam is so careful about his accent at school. A person is from where they’re from. There’s no shame to be had in circumstance, only shame in not changing the ones you don’t like. Also, he finds Adam’s settling voice deeply attractive, which is something he’ll only admit to himself after at least five beers and will never admit to anyone else. 

When Adam finishes the passage he closes the book and Ronan feels the bed shift under them as he leans to toss it over to the wall near where his backpack is propped up. Ronan hears the thud and then everything goes still. After a few minutes Adam wearily says, “I can’t fight tonight.” 

“Then don’t,” Ronan replies. He shifts and rolls over, putting his back to Adam before opening his eyes again. There’s a new scuff along the baseboard by the door and Ronan wonders if Adam kicked it on accident or on purpose. 

“Is that an option?” 

“What do you want? A note? Check yes or no? I’m just going to draw in the maybe bubble and you know it.” 

“You are actually seven.” It’s more of a sigh than a statement. “If you’re going to take up half of the bed can you at least take up a half that doesn’t leave the rest of it useless?”

Ronan pushes himself around on the mattress until his head is tilting over the end of it and his shoes are pressed up against the wall and Adam’s pillow. 

“Gross,” Adam says. He picks up the pillow and drops it at the foot of the bed next to Ronan and situates himself on his back so that his left shoulder is pressing into Ronan’s shoulder blade and his elbow is pressing into Ronan’s spine. “Did you give God my message while you were down there?”

“That one about you wanting a pony for your birthday? Yeah, I told him. He said you can’t have one until you prove you can take care of a dog.”

“I take good enough care of you, don’t I? You’d think that would get me some credit.” 

“I am not a dog,” Ronan says, but there’s no heat in it. “I never piss in corners and only occasionally chew at your shoes.” 

“See? I’m already good at it.” 

Ronan rolls onto his back, which forces him flush against Adam’s side. He’s still burning and Adam is so warm. It doesn’t help the way he thought it would.

“What do you want, Ronan? I’m not a puzzle box. You can’t just plug your indecipherable moods into me and expect me to translate them into actual English.”

_Yes, I can_ , Ronan thinks, because Adam is better at Ronan than he thinks he is. Out loud he says, “I don’t. Fuck. I don’t know,” because he suddenly doesn’t. He thought he did. He had in the church. Now he’s adrift. He’s right here, but he’s _so lost_. “I don’t want to go home.” 

“That’s actually all you want,” Adam says, as if knowing the answer was any sort of solution. 

“You don’t have any god damned idea.” Restless, Ronan shifts on his side again, this time facing Adam. He watches Adam chew at the dry skin on his lower lip and tries to read the telegraph code in the way his eyes shift beneath his closed eyelids. 

“Show me,” Adam says. He says it the same way he says it to Cabeswater, with loaded curiosity and slight fear. 

Ronan knows that he’s unpredictable, something else, a creature of magic, but it’s not the way he identifies himself. No part of him takes his status as a creature of magic into account when he’s summing himself up. It’s always a jolt when he realizes that the others do. 

It’s the beer that does it, has to be. If Ronan felt like himself he would never have kissed Adam. If Ronan felt like himself he would have stayed where he was until morning, watching Adam’s chest rise and fall until he woke up and then Ronan would have started a small argument for them to bicker about until his exit became dramatically necessary. It was the easiest way he’d found so far to leave the places he wanted to stay, just have someone else kick him out. 

It’s the beer and it takes them both by surprise, because while Ronan is thinking _I can’t believe I’m doing this, I can’t believe I’m this stupid_ , Adam is looking up at him with wide, shocked eyes. Ronan doesn’t know how to kiss Adam, he simply presses his lips against Adam’s hard enough to push Adam’s head roughly down into the pillow. It’s thrilling. It’s terrible. It’s the best and worst thing he’s ever done. 

He pulls back and props his head onto his hand, watching Adam mentally work through what has just happened. Ronan’s knees are pressed into Adam’s thigh and he’s relieved when Adam doesn’t immediately shift away.

“That’s.” Adam frowns and then he doesn’t. “That’s not what I expected.”

“In other words, it’s exactly what you should have expected.”

“Fuck,” Adam says softly, as if Ronan has transferred a part of himself into Adam through the kiss. 

“Fuck,” Ronan echoes. 

“You can stay,” Adam says, “but you can’t do that again.” 

Ronan grunts an affirmative and rolls away. He kicks off his shoes and curls up onto his other side again. “Thanks,” he says.

“I didn’t say ever.” Adam shifts behind him and places his hand over the ridge of Ronan’s hip. Ronan is never going to stop burning. “Just, not until you’re sober. Not until you know what you’re doing.”

Ronan laughs. “It’s hilarious you think sobriety lends me that.” 

“You know what I mean.” 

“Tomorrow,” Ronan says. “I’ll try again.”

“ _We’ll_ try again tomorrow,” Adam replies. When Ronan finally falls asleep the lights are still on.


	5. Chapter 5

Adam’s looking at his hands and not at the dingy mirror, so he freezes when he catches a movement out of the corner of his eye that’s another face appearing in the reflection next to his own. He takes a deep breath, prepared for whatever educational horror Cabeswater has decided to throw at him this evening, but when he looks up it’s only Noah. He exhales heavily and curses in a way that would make Ronan proud. 

“You can’t just _do_ that,” he says, wiping his hands on his jeans. 

“I didn’t know when you’d be alone again,” Noah says, and it’s a fair concern. 

Adam may feel lonesome, but he is hardly ever truly alone. He turns and leans his hip against the sink. “What is it?” 

“You should do it.”

“Do what?” Adam says slowly, because really, between the five of them that could mean almost literally anything. 

“You should kiss him.” 

Adam shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know that I know who you mean. Who is this him of which you speak?” 

Noah rolls his eyes and Adam gets the feeling that Noah’d like to take him by the shoulders and shake him. He probably deserves it. “You are both so stupid.”

“Is that you or Blue talking?” Adam isn’t sure Blue has noticed anything about the way he and Ronan have been slowly circling each other, but if she had she would have said it the exact same way. 

Noah just crosses his arms and waits. 

“What if he doesn’t want me to kiss him?” Adam asks, throwing his hand toward the bathroom door and gesturing to where Ronan is lurking on the other side of it with Blue and Gansey. “I’ve been here the whole time. If he wanted to kiss me he could have just asked.”

“Like you’ve asked him?” 

And that’s fair. Well, not fair, but. “You’re quite creepy, do you know that?”

“Look,” Noah says, ignoring the slander. “It’s taken him a long time to accept himself and he’s really worried that none of us will, or that we’ll need as much time as he did, and none of us has that much time.”

“Ominous,” Adam says. Then, to himself more than Noah, “why wouldn’t we accept him? Why would that be worse than all of the other things about him?”

“Because we love him,” Noah says quietly. 

Adam opens his mouth to respond that of course they love him. They all love each other, but then he thinks about all of the other people who have loved Ronan. About the mother and brother who were created rather than born. About the father who left him and the brother who’s always leaving. Even Kavinsky, though his interest in Ronan was surely not based in anything like love. Still, he was another person who claimed to want Ronan and who wasn’t there to collect in the end. 

“ _Oh,_ ” Adam says, finally. 

There’s a heavy banging on the door. “Did you move into there, Parrish?” Ronan shouts. “Some of us would like to get to the fridge!”

Noah nods and disappears. Adam pulls a soda from the fridge. He opens the door and presses the drink in Ronan’s hand. Ronan blinks down at it a few times and backs up to let Adam pass. Adam takes up a spot by the corner of the pool table just in time to watch Blue hand Gansey his ass. 

“Yes!” She raises her cue in the air dramatically and hops and down a few times. “Take that! Mint chocolate chip, please.” 

Gansey sighs dramatically, appearing as put upon as a young man of wealth and privilege could. “Put your shoes on,” he says. “If we’re quick about it we’ll get there before they close. Adam?”

Adam shakes his head. “I need to be getting home, so I’ll take the raincheck. Thanks.”

“Ronan?” There’s a tilt in Gansey’s voice that means he wants Ronan to say no as much as Adam wants him to. 

“I’ll pass,” Ronan says, because he’s not stupid. 

Blue and Gansey haven’t said anything to anyone yet about their interest in each other, but it’s noticeable that it’s there. They probably haven’t done it for the same reason Adam and Ronan haven’t said anything to each other. Saying things out loud alters them. You can’t take back the things you say, while the things you merely think can be rewritten again and again. It’s a wonder how four people can know each other so well and feel like they don’t know each other at all. So they all ignore the separate tensions. Noah excluded, because he knows everything, though he hardly ever shares. 

Gansey nods and puts down his cue. He grabs the Pig’s keys from his desk and slips them into his jeans with his wallet and phone and let’s Blue drag him out the door. All of the sound goes with them. 

“You’ll be off then,” Ronan says. He hasn’t opened the soda Adam gave him, but he also hasn’t put it back. 

“In a bit.” Adam collects the balls from the pockets in the corners of the pool table and racks them. Focusing on the plastic triangle, trying to make them as tight as his throat feels. 

Ronan moves closer, placing the can down on the ledge. He leans against the table and watches. “Do you want to play a game?” 

“No,” Adam says, because he doesn’t want to lose a game. “I just want to break. That’s the best part.” 

“It does make a very satisfying sound,” Ronan agrees. 

Adam plucks the two cues from the table, leaning one against the end and taking the other in hand. He places the cue ball in the center of the bright blue felt and takes aim. He pulls his cue back and just as he’s about to shoot Chainsaw swoops in from Ronan’s bedroom and lands on his shoulder. The ball jumps into the air and lands amidst the rack, making a horrendous clacking thud that is not at all pleasing. He ducks away from the bird and cries, “what? Why!”

Ronan laughs hysterically and holds his hand out. Chainsaw leaps from Adam’s shoulder and hits his ear with her wing on her way to land on Ronan’s wrist. He strokes her beak once with his thumb and pulls a cheese cracker out of his pocket to feed her. “Good girl.” 

“Is there a creature you keep around you that isn’t a total terror, Lynch?” Adam re-racks the balls to try again.

Ronan holds his hand up to his shoulder and let’s Chainsaw hop onto it. She settles in at the crook of his neck. “No, I spend a lot of my time with you, after all.” 

“I’m not your creature, strictly speaking.” Adam takes aim again. This time, uninterrupted, the ball meets the others in a very satisfying way that sends them scattering across the table, clicking into each other and thudding off the pads. Not a single one sinks. 

“No,” Ronan says. “You’re your own creature. That’s the point of you, isn’t it?”

Adam stands up straight and rests his hand over the top of the cue. He rolls it around in his palm a few times, not minding the chalk that’s smearing there. “I would like it to be.” 

Ronan is _looking_ at him in that way he’s developed. Like he might look at a Rubik's Cube before he decided the easiest way to go about it would be to soak off the stickers and re-apply them in order. “Then it is.” 

It’s incredible to Adam how Ronan can say things in a way that bends the reality around them to make them true. Ronan could tell Adam that he shot JFK and Adam wouldn’t doubt it for a moment. Knowing Ronan, anything could be the truth relative to the plane of existence he was on at the time. If Adam had the ability to slip into his dreams he’s not sure he’d ever come back out again. 

“You say that as if it’s that easy.” He drops the cue onto the table and Chainsaw hops down to inspect it. There are fifteen feet between them and Adam’s not sure it’s a trek he can make. It is almost physically painful to him to think about Ronan silently wanting him when all he’s wanted this whole time was for someone to want him.

“Isn’t it?” Ronan shrugs. “Picture what you want, make it real. It’s what I do.” 

“You’re magic,” Adam argues. _You’re a hypocrite_ , he thinks. 

“And you’re a god damned magician,” Ronan counters. Chainsaw makes a noise that’s a cross between a sneeze and cry and Ronan looks away from Adam to check on her. 

Adam’s aware that time is ticking away. He’s always aware of it now. He’s aware that Blue and Gansey will be back any moment. He’s aware that if Ronan looks at him again he won’t be able to move. So he moves. He trails his fingers along the felt and polished wood of the table as he rounds its corner and then takes those fingers, tingling with the friction, and places them against Ronan’s jaw. 

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Ronan keeps his eyes trained on Chainsaw as she bounces from ball to ball, frustrated that she can’t land on any of them without it rolling away from her. “Didn’t want to take advantage.”

“Of our friendship?”

“Of a lot of things.”

It’s a strange love, Adam thinks, that makes not acting its act. “Can I take advantage of you?”

Ronan flicks his eyes so that he’s looking sidelong at Adam. There is a crease in his hollow brow. “You can take anything you want from me.”

There’s an emphasis on _you_ that Adam isn’t prepared for. Ronan swallows hard and Adam thinks he must be working to recapture his bobbing, flashing pride. He presses his fingers into the sharp curve of Ronan’s jaw and forces his face toward him. Then he closes his eyes and leans in until his lips find Ronan’s. 

Adam’s had ideas about kissing since he was very young. He’s watched his father and mother give chaste kisses in passing. He’s watched movies where the music swells as two bodies meld together. He’s watched other teenagers awkwardly shove their tongues down each other’s throats in the back booths at Nino’s. Adam’s ideas about kissing are nothing compared to actually kissing. 

He places a hand at the nape of Ronan’s neck. Ronan grabs Adam’s face and then his shoulders and then he ghosts his fingers down Adam’s sides until he’s holding onto Adam’s waist. It’s so close. It’s not close enough. Ronan tentatively slips his tongue between Adam’s lips and Adam opens his mouth wider, giving up more of himself, wishing he could give up everything and just live in this moment. 

Ronan backs Adam up until he’s pressed against the pool table, shoving it over several inches with their weight. Chainsaw makes a disapproving tuttering sound. Ronan slips his hand under the tail of Adam’s t-shirt so that his fingers can press directly into Adam’s skin. Adam settles into want and tries to ignore the frustration that they haven’t been doing this the whole time. 

The downstairs door slams and they both jump, pulling apart. Gansey skips into the apartment like a stone, causing ripples to cascade through the moment, dispersing it. “I took Blue home and, oh-” he says, seeing Adam. “If I’d known you’d still be here I’d have gotten you one too.” 

Gansey doesn’t look at them in a way that makes it very obvious he isn’t looking at them. He sets two styrofoam milkshake cups and his keys onto his desk before slipping into the bathroom-laundry-kitchen and closing the door. 

Ronan laughs and runs his hand back over his scalp until he’s gripping the back of his neck. He looks strangely sheepish. “I uh, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.” 

“Yes,” Adam says. He straightens the hem of his shirt and picks his way around the model of Henrietta to get to where his shoes are sitting by the door. “And uh, about that taking what you want thing. You too.” 

Ronan nods and holds out his hand. Chainsaw flutters to him. Adam wants to flutter to him. Instead he makes his exit and spends a solid minute pressed against the wall of the second story landing with the back of his hand to his mouth before he’s got enough of his coordination back to handle the stairs.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s late, even for Ronan. It’s so late it’s come around again to early and he’s spent most of the night lying on his back with his arm draped over his eyes actively trying not to think about the fire dragon or the fact that Kavinsky was dead or worse, what his brother has been through. He’d felt such a thrill when the trees had put a name to it: _greywaren_. What good is all of this magic if everyone he loves can still be hurt? He starts at a thousand and counts slowly backwards, breathing out on the evens. 

When he finally falls face first into sleep there’s fire everywhere. He’s not surprised, but his pulse starts racing and he looks up, frantically searching the skies for teeth and claws and scales. He finds only still branches and smoke and dazzling pinprick stars. The scene settles in around him and he realizes the fire is contained to one wide pyre. The people milling around him are laughing and clinking together bottles of beer or playing volleyball using the fire as a net. It’s just a party. Not even one of Kavinsky’s. 

_Everything is fine_ , he thinks. _I’m fine. They’re fine. This is fine._

He places his hand flat against his chest, willing his heart to slow. When he looks at the fire again Adam is coming towards him and it almost looks like he’s come through it. His face is cloaked in dancing shadow and it’s not until he’s very close that Ronan can see that he’s at ease. The recent tense set of his mouth and shoulders has been wiped away and he’s just the boy Ronan used to resent for taking up Gansey’s time. There’s a swift pain in Ronan’s chest as he mourns the version of Adam he never really knew. 

Adam hands Ronan one of the glass bottles he’s carrying. For a moment Ronan is startled that he’d dream up a version of Adam that drank, but he looks again and it’s just Coke. 

“Thanks,” he says. 

“Sure,” Adam replies. They stand shoulder to shoulder in the burnt orange glow watching everyone around them go about their lives like there weren’t Welsh kings to find. “Noah said you threw him out a window.”

“It was for science,” Ronan says. “I needed to know if spirit matter held to the same gravitational rules as everything else. And I’d run out of feathers and bowling balls.”

Adam laughs and Ronan wants to catch the sound in a mason jar to keep under his bed, like fireflies, until all of the glow wears out of it. “How life-ist of you. Noah is people too, Ronan.”

“That’s just what he wants you to think.”

Adam leans sideways and bumps Ronan with his elbow. Ronan bumps him back and suddenly they’re pushing and fake wrestling with their free hands, carefully holding the bottles up and out and wherever they won’t be knocked to the ground or spilled. Ronan hadn’t realized how much he’d missed sparring with its casual contact that didn’t burn and faux aggression that wasn’t hungry. Adam, who is a scrapper, neatly sweeps at Ronan’s leg with his foot and topples him over with a light push to the shoulder. 

Ronan’s teeth knock together hard with the impact and his Coke falls sideways into the dirt, spilling glittering black liquid onto the dry mountain grass. It’s a thrilling defeat. He leans back, propping himself up with his hands, and stares lazily up at Adam. 

“What is it?” Adam asks. “Is there still grease on my face? I thought I got it all.” He rubs at his cheek with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. 

In his dreams Ronan can be anything. In his dreams Ronan can be the sort of person who isn’t afraid of who he is and who isn’t afraid to tell the people he values that he values them. In his dreams Ronan can drink Adam in in long gulps rather than short sips. So he does. Then, because there’s no consequence he says, “it’s nothing. I just like looking at you.”

Adam sits down next to him cross legged and wipes his hands on his jeans. He offers Ronan his bottle and Ronan accepts a drink of it before passing it back. “Did you want him?” Adam asks. 

Ronan curses his subconscious right to hell. “No. Yes. Probably not. Not really.”

“That is a lot of answers for one question.” 

“Some questions don’t have satisfactory answers.” 

Joseph Kavinsky had been a horror show, but because of that he’d burned bright and nothing touched him. Anything that tried fell to ash and that seemed to include the things Ronan didn’t know how to live without anymore: fear, self-loathing, shame. Ronan had wanted to touch that, just once, but he hadn’t wanted to burn away himself. It was a slow lesson, that just because a fire was there didn’t mean a moth had to test its warmth. If Kavinsky had lived Ronan might not have ever learned it. A pang of guilt blossoms in his chest. 

Ronan realizes then that everything has gone quiet. He looks around. The fire is still burning, but the people are gone. There isn’t a single solo cup to be found. The scene has been wiped just as clean as Adam, like no one else had ever been there. 

“Do you think you could love me?” Adam asks. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Ronan says. He knows he’s talking to himself, but he doesn’t know how he’s going to answer. It’s unsettling. He thinks, _I already do._

“No,” Adam says. “Not, would you put yourself in danger to save me from a hitman? Or, is it comfortable for you to have me around? Or, would you fuck me?”

Ronan grunts and looks away. He can feel the heat creeping across his cheeks. He’s thought about Adam, but he hasn’t _thought_ about Adam. He hasn’t let himself consider the logistics of the two of them or what Adam might look like laid bare beneath him or how his teeth and nails might mark the summer tanned skin. Thinking about it now undoes him entirely. He can feel his control on the dream fraying around the edges. 

“I mean,” Adam continues, “could you handle the fact that my fear comes out as anger? Could you listen to me complain about the cost of things and life and breath? Could you nail me back together when my tornadoes rip me apart and not flinch when I cry out with every swing of the hammer? Could you love _me_ and not the idea of me?”

Ronan doesn’t have an answer for that, but he doesn’t think he’s supposed to. He thinks it’s just important that he’s considered it. He’s always planned to tread lightly around Adam, afraid to shake anything up or push him away, because if he does something stupid and runs Adam off it’s not just him that will feel the pain of it. Noah and Gansey and Blue also need Adam and Ronan needs all of them just as they are. Anything that upsets the balance of them isn’t worth chasing. But oh, what a joy of a chase he thinks it could be. 

He sits up straight and knits his fingers together in his lap. Then he leans toward Adam like he’s wanted to do so many times. Adam leans forward as well and they meet in the middle. It’s not lust Ronan is after, so they keep their hands to themselves. He simply wants to know what it would feel like to place his lips to Adams. To push and feel resistance. To pull and feel an equal tug. It feels like orbit. It feels like the sort of power that might actually protect people. He needs it. 

The dream slips away from him, slowly stretching the moment out so it feels like he might have been kissing Adam for a minute, for a month, for a year. Then he’s hovering outside of himself like he always is when he comes back. It must be mid-day, the light coming in through the windows is so bright. His arm is still crooked over his face. His free hand is holding a green tinted cola bottle flat against his chest.

As he settles back into himself he thinks about the things Adam will need from him, starts to think about if he’s capable of providing them or if he ever could be. When he regains use of his arms he presses the lip of the bottle to his own lower lip. It’s sticky and warm and for that afternoon it’s enough.


	7. Chapter 7

They got to Nino’s kind of early on Friday, but then they loitered, letting Blue refresh their drinks and talk to them between tables, ordering breadsticks and weird salads at a slow pace so no one would kick them out. Now it’s 8:30 and the place is packed. Blue’s visits are getting shorter with more time between them and Gansey is getting antsy, the way he often does when conversation came to a natural lull. Adam quite likes sitting in silence, but Gansey’s mind tends to stall if it’s not being constantly fed. 

“I gave you the asshole discount,” Blue says, dropping the final ticket by the table before dashing off again. Gansey and Adam both lean in to check and sure enough, they’re a couple salads and a round of breadsticks short on what is still a pretty expensive order for three people. Four if you count Noah, but they don’t. Not for this. 

Adam digs for his wallet and Ronan drops a twenty dollar bill on the table. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I still owe you from before.” 

Gansey looks between them, thumb pressed to his lip, waiting for Adam to argue. When he doesn’t Gansey takes Ronan’s twenty and heads up to the register with Noah on his heels. This leaves Ronan and Adam alone on the same side of the booth. Ronan kicks his feet up into what had been Gansey’s seat and stretches his arm over the back of the booth, effectively cutting Adam off from leaving even if he wanted to. 

“What do you owe me for?” he says. 

“Gas,” Ronan replies. He’s looking out over the floor of the restaurant so Adam can’t look him in the eye, which means he knows he’s making it up. Even if he hadn’t been, Ronan has driven Adam far more places in the last month or so than Adam has ever driven him. It would be a long time before he evened out on that end. 

Pride rises, bitter in the back of Adam’s throat. He’s working on it, but it still stings that his friends don’t even have to think about it. Adam has spent his whole life thinking about money, being told how much of a drain he was on his parents’ funds, how much better his father’s life would be if he didn’t exist. He tries to imagine Richard Gansey II or what he knows of Niall Lynch treating their sons as anything but blessings and he can’t. Still, this isn’t an argument he wants to have here, so he swallows it down hard. 

The bell over the door rings and he glances in that direction, fully expecting to see boys from school, or at least kids his age from neighboring schools. Instead it’s one of their neighbors from the park. There are four small boys with him, all in little league uniforms. Adam ducks back, trying to hide behind Ronan, but their eyes lock and the man’s face goes grim. 

In that moment Adam Parrish is knocked outside of who he thinks he is and is instead dumped into the ice bucket of who this man thinks he is: traitor to his family, effete, a snob, and currently huddled in a restaurant booth very close to another boy when there is plenty of room for them to not be huddled. He thinks about every time his father or his father’s friends have used the word _fag_ for lesser offenses. Adam waits until the man’s been seated and then nudges Ronan hard with his knee. 

“I need to get up,” he says. 

Ronan turns to him, frowning. Adam knows it would be asking a lot for Ronan not to notice that the man had been looking at them, and even more for him to not realize that was the problem. “You don’t owe them shit,” he says quietly, the corners of his mouth dipping into venom. 

“I know, uh, bathroom.” Adam nudges him again. Ronan drops his legs down and twists sideways so Adam can climb past him out of the booth. He’s glaring at the table of little leaguers. 

Adam actually does go to the bathroom. He leans against the black walls and closes his eyes, not minding that he’s probably getting brightly colored chalk graffiti all over his school uniform. His throat feels tight and he cups his hands over his nose and mouth and breathes deeply for several minutes, trying to stop his legs from shaking. It’s a testament to how deeply his father has carved himself into Adam’s soul that just the thought of him can do this. 

It doesn’t matter that Adam hasn’t actually done anything wrong. _He wants to_ , and he’s been working that out internally for months, reassuring himself over and over again that it’s _okay_. His memory plays a past rant on a loop about boys who sit too closely to boys growing up to be men who can’t get enough of men and he’s afraid of what his father will do if Adam’s transgressions get back to him. He wonders how far outside of Henrietta he’ll have to run before he feels safe, before he can finally start trying to grow into the person he thinks he might want to be.

The door bangs open and Adam starts, dropping his hands to his sides and moving to the sink as if he’d been doing that all along. He washes his hands and screws himself up tight before heading back into the dining area. 

He whips his head around a few times, but the others aren’t anywhere to be seen. Blue is finishing taking orders from a table and when she turns around she spots him. Immediately her face softens. He’s gotten slowly used to the idea that it doesn’t take nearly as much skill to read him as he’d like to think it does and Blue is better at reading people than most to begin with. She waits for him in the center of the room before walking towards the door with him. She drops the menus into the podium. 

“See ya tomorrow,” she says, and gives him a high five. Then she thinks better of it and drags him sharply close for a quick hug, shoving her face into his shoulder. A group of Aglionby boys at a table by the front window hoot and hollar. Adam flicks them off for her and she laughs and punches him in the shoulder. 

He’s still smarting a little over how Blue doesn’t want him, but he’s very happy to have her as part of his new family any way he can. “See ya,” he says, and pushes into the night. 

Ronan’s leaning against the front of the building with a foot kicked up on the wall behind him. The collar of his leather jacket is popped up and Adam thinks he looks like James Dean might look if James Dean had been an actual delinquent. “Gansey and Noah headed off,” he says. 

“That’s fine. Do you think you can give me a ride back to the church?”

Ronan nods and kicks off the wall. They head toward the alley behind the restaurant where the BMW sits crookedly parked in two parallel spots. Any lesser car would have been booted by now, Adam’s sure, but the things around Ronan always have a way of shuffling off authority, as if not believing in something actually erases it from existence. They get inside, but Ronan doesn’t start the car. Instead he just sits, holding his keys in his lap. 

Adam stares at his profile for several minutes wondering what he’s thinking before he says, “I’m sorry?” He’s not sure what he’s apologizing for, but getting in on the ground floor with apologies is always easier than protracted fighting.

“No,” Ronan says. “You’re not.” 

“Okay,” Adam says. 

Ronan explodes into motion, punching the steering wheel a few times and then jamming the keys into the ignition. “You don’t owe them shit,” he says again. 

“I know. Listen, it’s okay.”

“It is _not_ okay.”

“Well, yes, it’s not. But it just, is. We’re so close to school ending, to finding Glendower. Then it won’t matter anymore. None of it will matter. I just have to make it to then.”

“You shouldn’t have to eke by, hiding until you’re granted a favor or a diploma.” Ronan turns to look at him suddenly and in the glow from the weak streetlight he looks hollow. “You’re fucking magic. You’re fucking intelligent. You’re fucking beautiful. And fuck anyone who wants to make you think you’re not.”

“I’m...beautiful?” Adam asks, because he’s honestly not sure he heard that last part right. 

Ronan simply glowers at him. Then, in what Adam’s sure is an actual miracle, he looks away first. He turns the key in the ignition and puts one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the stick shift. Adam reaches out and places his hand over Ronan’s on the shift knob. He chews his bottom lip and looks around them quickly, making sure that there’s no one else in the alleyway. 

Once he’s sure they’re alone he pulls Ronan’s hand off the shift and clasps Ronan’s fingers tight within his own. Then he leans over all of it and grabs the lapel of Ronan’s jacket, twisting it in his fist and dragging Ronan closer back over the center line of the car created by the radio and the rearview mirror. 

The kiss is short and searing. Adam can feel himself grounded against Ronan all the way down to this toes. He is totally undone by it. When they break away Ronan is breathing heavily. 

Ronan clears his throat with a guttural cough. “Can I have my hand back?” 

Adam reluctantly lets go of Ronan’s hand and untangles himself from the jacket and the pleasant smell of the leather. “The church?” he says, hopeful. 

Ronan nods. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and drops it in Adam’s lap. “Text Gansey, tell him not to wait up.” 

Laughing, Adam does.


	8. Chapter 8

The small entry trap to the attic at the Barns is in Ronan’s parents’ room and standing there next to their bed feels more like trespassing than any of his other visits. Even more than the ones when he was actually trespassing. But Declan is off at college not giving a shit and Ronan has taken it upon himself to do an inventory of what’s there. It feels wrong to him to not have a complete picture of his legacy. 

Adam pauses beside him for a few moments before sticking his hands in his pockets and ambling over to the corner where a piece of shoestring is hanging down from the square door. He pulls it experimentally and then backs away as it accordions down, depositing a small wooden ladder at his feet that reaches up into the dark hole. “Shall we?” he asks. 

Ronan nods and absentmindedly reaches up to brush Chainsaw’s tail away from where it’s tickling the back of his neck. He doesn’t move until he hears Adam scramble up and crawl across the floorboards away from the hole. His heart is suddenly heavier than it has been in a long time and he questions his logic in bringing Adam here. He doesn’t want to be alone with his father’s memory, but he doesn’t know if he should be alone with Adam either. He shakes his head a little and forces his heart out of his throat and then climbs up the ladder. 

There’s enough room to stand in the attic, but Adam is still crouched on the floor. He’s pulled open a dusty green box and started laying the contents in a sunbeam slipping through one of the squat windows. Ronan looks away, trying not to notice the way the light makes a halo of Adam’s hair or how the muscles he’s developed doing Cabeswater’s work are standing pronounced beneath his thin Metallica t-shirt. Instead he moves to the end of the room, treading heavily on the wooden floor just to make enough noise to fill the space between them. Chainsaw hops on his shoulder a few times before fluttering down and scuttling over to haphazard pile of blankets to inspect it. 

Propped against the wall Ronan finds a wheel to a motorcycle he doesn’t think his father ever had, a long Irish license plate, and a golf bag, which is strange because his father never played golf as far as he knew. Upon closer inspection the bag holds an odd collection of fishing poles and arrows decorated with different colored feathers, some of which shimmer even in the shadows. When he holds the fly on one of the fishing rods to his ear he can hear a river babbling. He doesn’t think his father was much of an archer or fisherman either, but that’s the beauty of dreams. You can be absolutely anything.

“Hey,” Adam says. “You might want to look at these.”

When Ronan turns Adam’s holding a stack of photos over his shoulder, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off the book open on the floor in front of him. Ronan drops the fishing rod he’s holding back into the bag with a thin plunk and goes to take the photos. 

He sits down across the box from Adam with his legs crossed, propping his back against the wall and let’s himself have several straight seconds of watching Adam read before looking down and starting to flip through the photos. In them his father is a little older than Declan, smiling wider than Ronan ever saw him smile. He’s unguarded and happy and Ronan finds it hard not to be jealous. 

His father hadn’t been an unkind man and had clearly loved his family, but he had also been a preoccupied man, a man with turbulent worries. For the first time, Ronan feels cheated of not just the time he doesn’t get to have with his father, but also of some of the time he did have. In some of the photos Niall is with other young men, clearly bandmates or school mates. In some of them he’s with an older man Ronan has always known was his grandfather, but only recently learned was also murdered for being a greywaren. 

Ronan thinks, _is it my responsibility to pass this on to a son?_ And then he thinks, _is it fair to?_ It’s not a thought he’s prepared for, being too young himself for either sons or fairness. The unsettledness of it must be written there on his face for Adam to read too, because he gently presses the knuckles of his right hand into Ronan’s shin. When Ronan looks up Adam is studying him, head tilted to favor his hearing side, eyes deeper and stranger than any eyes Ronan has ever seen. What _does_ giving yourself to a forest do to a person?

“I’m sorry,” Adam says softly. 

Ronan shrugs and drops the photos next to him, pushing them under his thigh and out of sight. “What have you got?” 

“Did you know your dad wrote poetry?” 

“Yeah,” Ronan says, and he can’t help but smile a little at that, because it’s one of the things that Declan hates most about their father. In Ronan’s experience there is an equal amount of truth and lies in any poetry, which makes him feel like he and his brother should favor or distrust it equally. Instead, Declan found it to be roundly frivolous and Ronan found-finds still-that it’s relatively charming. “He was a musician too.” 

Adam smiles back at him. “Some of this isn’t bad.” Then he narrows his eyes slightly and says, “you don’t write, do you?” 

“No,” Ronan says, because it has honestly never occurred to him try to write anything outside of what is required for school. “It seems dangerous, somehow. Just leaving behind all of those unnecessary words for anyone to find.” 

“I don’t think they’re unnecessary,” Adam says. “Though, when you’re holding on to the secrets we’re holding on to, secrets that don’t belong to us really, I guess I understand the danger part of it.” He chews on his ragged pinky nail and flips the page. “Think of all the things we have to read for school that make you feel bigger than you are. That’s important, that feeling and anything that can give it to you.”

“I swear to god, if you bring Hemingway into this.” 

Adam laughs quietly. “I can create beauty at will, but I could never find it in myself, to will you to be any other way than you are.” 

Ronan leans forward and follows Adam’s finger as it trails across the tight, straight lines of words. He wonders if it’s about his mother. He wonders if his mother is based on anyone real. Then he realizes that Adam has stopped reading and that they’re crouched together, just outside of the beam of light, and he wonders something entirely different. 

Neither of them moves for what feels like an interminable amount of time. Ronan’s knee goes numb underneath him. Adam fidgets slightly, but doesn’t pull away. Ronan can feel the hair on his arms standing, straining toward Adam, just like every other part of him is almost constantly thrumming to do. 

“Adam,” he says, just trying it out, and it feels more dangerous than any poem he might ever attempt. 

“Yeah?” 

“Can I?” he asks, and it feels both silly and necessary. 

“Gods,” Adam says, “yes.”

Very carefully Ronan presses forward onto both knees and Adam meets him there, over the box and the book. Ronan’s not sure what to do with his hands, so he rests them on Adam’s shoulders and pulls him forward ever so slightly until their lips meet. Adam’s eyes are still open, so Ronan doesn’t close his. 

It’s not difficult to figure out, and they’re both somewhat afraid to do too much too fast, so they kiss slowly, testing each other. It doesn’t last that long, but Ronan doesn’t feel like it needs to. When they pull apart he can tell by the look on Adam’s face that it will happen again. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, not sure of how to voice the things he really wants to say. Not quite sure either, of what those things are. 

Adam shrugs and reaches behind Ronan for the photos. He closes them into the journal and then presses it into Ronan’s hands. “Don’t be,” he says. “Be who you want to be, so you don’t have to be sorry. So neither of us has to.” 

Chainsaw calls to Ronan with a sharp “ _kerah_ ” and lands on the floor between them trailing a length gold thread from her beak. Ronan takes it from her and twirls it up in his fingers, studying it in the sunlight. He wonders if there’s a spinning wheel anywhere on the property. His heart feels lighter, but somehow more foreign.


	9. Chapter 9

Adam pulls up next to the Pig in the Monmouth Manufacturing parking lot and climbs out of his car. There’s still a little thrill to that for him, _his car_. So many things in the last year have manifested for him exactly as he needed them that sometimes he can’t believe this is still his life. Even the incredibly shitty parts have been tempered by Blue and the other boys. Small miracles, as his mother would say.

He turns to close the door and something bounces off the back of his shoulder. Adam jerks his head around and sees Gansey running toward him. He’s wearing dark blue sweatpants with the school raven on the thigh and a grey t-shirt that says CREW in big black letters across the chest. He’s breathing hard and even under the few shitty orange parking lights left in the lot Adam can see that he’s sweating in spite of the cooling night air. 

“Sorry!” he says, dropping a hand onto Adam’s shoulder. “That one went a little wide.”

“What one?” Adam asks. 

As if in answer, Ronan ambles over to them. He’s wearing black jeans and no shirt at all. There’s a soccer ball tucked between his elbow and his side. “You come to join the game, Parrish?” 

“Ronan,” Gansey says sharply. “Adam shouldn’t be playing soccer while he’s sick. Of course, he also shouldn’t have been at work.” He turns to look pointedly at Adam. 

Adam holds his hands up in surrender. “Some of us have rent to pay.”

“They’re a _church_ ,” Gansey says, in a way that makes it clear ‘church’ is mostly an abstract concept for him. “You can’t tell me they wouldn’t understand.”

“Lay off him,” Ronan says, chucking the ball up into Gansey’s chest. Then he jerks his chin at Adam. “Come on, the notes are in my bag.” 

Gansey shrugs and drops the ball, dribbling off with it back towards the side lot. Ronan turns and Adam follows him across the parking lot and up the stairs, all the while wondering over the fact that Ronan had actually taken notes. 

Once they break into the lit up second floor of Monmouth though, Adam has something else to wonder over. Ronan’s tattoo is branded angrily against his pale skin in the stark light and Adam realizes he’s never actually seen the whole thing. It’s truly glorious in the way all teenage rebellion should be, Ronan’s back carved away in sloping curves and tightly bound celtic knots that build flowers cascading from animals with sharp teeth. The tendrils that commonly stick out of his shirt collars have a framing effect on all of it, one that Adam can only assume is mirrored somewhere beneath the band of Ronan’s jeans. It’s almost hard to take it all in at once. 

Ronan stops at the doorway to his room and looks over his shoulder. “Are you coming, or are you just going to stare?” His tone is neutral, but Adam can’t help but feel his cheeks flush as if he’s been caught doing something wrong anyway. He looks down as he follows after.

Adam isn’t often in Ronan’s room. He guesses he shouldn’t be surprised by how cluttered it is, considering Ronan’s talent, though he does wonder at some of the stuff that’s been kept. A pair of Kavinsky’s white sunglasses are perched behind Chainsaw’s cage and there’s a tug in Adam’s gut that he thinks might just be the lingering effects of his flu. Ronan is leaning over his bed digging into his backpack and Adam’s fingers are itching to touch the tattoo, to trace the graceful lines and the jagged points. In the interest of not being caught staring again Adam shoves his hands into his pockets and looks away. 

His eyes fall onto a mask hanging high on the wall above the bed. It looks like the one Ronan had warned him away from touching at the Barns, except it looks like it’s been put through a burning wood chipper. Adam’s eyes water, sickness warring with the drugs he took six hours ago, in spite of the box warning him not to work heavy machinery while on them. Ronan hands him a green folder full of papers and a tissue. 

Adam blows his nose with the tissue and clutches the folder to his chest. “Thanks,” he says for both. “You’ve certainly gone out of your way to decorate. Pottery Barn too mainstream for you?”

Ronan stands next to him with his hands on his hips also looking at the mask. “It’s reminding me of something important.”

“Is it to do your history reading? Because you should really start doing your history reading.” Then, to punctuate how much Ronan should do his history reading, Adam sneezes. 

“No,” Ronan’s voice is soft. He gets another tissue and hands it over. 

Adam wipes at his face. He should go home, but this defenseless version of Ronan is so rarely around for viewing that Adam feels like he’ll miss something important if he leaves. So he drops the tissues into a cardboard box full of what looks like horrible origami and says, “did it hurt?”

“Huh?” Ronan says, still looking at the mask.

“The tattoo. Did it hurt?” 

Ronan shrugs and whatever spell the mask had over him is broken. “Yeah, but I’ve had worse.” 

Adam’s eyes glance down at the insides of Ronan’s arms where his veins sit so close to the skin and he knows it’s true. “Can I?” Adam asks, probably because his sick brain is making it difficult for him to know better. 

Ronan shrugs and takes a step toward his bed. He’s looking at the mask again as Adam gingerly reaches out and traces one of the points from his shoulder down to a rose blooming near his shoulder blade. When his finger makes contact with the skin Ronan shudders and a muscle in his back twitches. Adam suddenly feels like he’s playing a part in something much more intimate than he’d meant to ask for. His stomach turns over. 

Ronan closes his eyes as Adam’s finger works its way down toward his hip. Adam brushes back across his spine and Ronan makes a strangled noise and spins around, grabbing Adam’s wrist. “Don’t,” he pleads. 

“I’m sorry,” Adam says. He doesn’t take his wrist back. He can’t breathe, but it’s probably just the mucus building up in his chest again. 

“No, I said you could.” Ronan looks guilty and Adam can’t begin to fathom what for. He wasn’t the one impinging on people’s personal space. 

“Hey,” Adam says. He’s never been quite sure what to do with other people’s pain. If he’s honest with himself he knows it’s because he’s spent most of his life being absorbed in his own. And Ronan is often raw, but his pain doesn’t usually need outside management. Not the way he medicates himself with booze or racing or burns it away in anger. 

This is different. Adam drops the folder back onto Ronan’s bed and leans in for a hug, which he thinks is probably an appropriate thing to do. Ronan stiffens for a moment as Adam’s hands touch him again, but then he leans forward too and kisses Adam on the mouth. 

It’s not what Adam was after but he tries not to react too strongly in his surprise. Instead he goes with it, letting Ronan gingerly place his lips over Adam’s own chapped, disgusting ones. It’s nice. It’s much better than the awkward hug he was going in for. He’s very disappointed that it’s happening while he’s a dripping ball of disease. 

The outside door opens and closes again, Gansey come to see what’s taking so long. Ronan pulls away, eyes dark. He studies Adam. He hands Adam another tissue. 

“Thanks,” Adam says. Then Gansey is through the door into Ronan’s room and hovering over Adam’s shoulder like his mother. He can’t say any more. He hopes Ronan knows he means for everything.


	10. Chapter 10

Ronan grunts, leaning into the makeshift lever. It’s the last stone they need to move for Cabeswater for the day and of course it’s impossible. Nothing about this damn ley line is ever easy. “Why couldn’t we just move a whole bunch of smaller stones?” he asks. “I’m sure we could find enough to counter this asshole.” 

Adam, who is above him actually in a god damned tree, clinging to it with his legs while he puts his whole back into pushing at the top of the boulder with his bleeding hands, says “We’d have to find twice as many to distract the power, and balancing them would be a nightmare.” 

“Balancing you is a nightmare,” Ronan says, because he assumes it’s true. It looks true anyway. Chainsaw is perched on top of the rock looking down at them quizzically, no doubt wondering why they’re upsetting her throne. “I’ll get you a new one.”

“Kerah,” she squawks, balefully. 

“Don’t give me that.” 

Adam shakes his head. “I can’t believe you talk to that bird like you understand it.”

“How else am I supposed to talk her?” Ronan stops pressing on the lever and crosses his arms. 

“I don’t know,” Adam says. “Like she’s a bird.” 

“You talk to the fucking forest,” Ronan says. “I don’t want to hear it.” Then, after some consideration, “park rangers never give you a hard time, do they?”

“Why would they?”

“You know, take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints,” he says, quoting the map they’d gotten at the entrance. 

“We’re not _taking_ anything.” Adam notices that Ronan has stopped trying so he does too, sitting back and wrapping an arm around the tree’s trunk. 

“Except for when we are.” There’s a whole pile of rocks in the back of the Hondayota from all over Virginia. It’s a wonder the damn thing runs at all. Ronan’s considering building a replica of Stonehenge in the middle of Gansey’s bed the next time they run off to DC and abandon him. 

Adam sighs. “The view’s actually nice up here. You should come and see.” 

“I’ll take your word for it,” Ronan says. 

“Mine and Chainsaw’s.” Adam holds out his arm experimentally and breaks out into a wide grin when Chainsaw hops off the stone and lands on his wrist. It’s short lived pride. “Aaaah, are there always claws?”

“Yup,” Ronan says. 

Adam shakes his arm. Chainsaw ruffles her feathers for balance but doesn’t move. “Why couldn’t you have dreamed a puppy?” 

“A wolf pup. That’s a good idea, Parrish!” Ronan makes a note to see if he can manifest one. Probably after he moves. He doesn’t know how Gansey will feel about a wolf. He also can’t imagine living without Gansey. It’s a conundrum. 

“No!”

Ronan can’t tell if Adam is talking to him or Chainsaw, but it doesn’t matter. Neither of them will listen. He cocks his hip and considers the miniature mountain before them. They only really have to move it a few inches. He removes the lever from their fulcrum and carries the heavy branch around to the other side of the stone. 

He’s dangerously close to the edge of the ravine here, but it seems to be the only way to do it. Cabeswater probably won’t let him die. It promised. _Incorruptible_. He sets to digging the earth away from underneath the front of the boulder with the tip of the branch. Adam and Chainsaw watch him work. 

“Anyone with fingers is more than welcome to help,” he barks. “In the interest of all of us getting home tonight.”

Adam nods and shakes Chainsaw off for good. She lands at Ronan’s feet and starts pecking at the freshly turned over dirt while Adam shimmies down the tree. Over the last six hours it’s become a sore point for Ronan that Adam, who grew up in a flat, dusty trailer park can climb circles around him when he grew up with half the trees in the state. Adam doesn’t rub it in. He doesn’t have to. Ronan’s sick of looking at his smug elbows and the way they confidently work his arms. They both dig at the space in front of the boulder.

“I think we might be able to get it now,” Adam says. He’s cleared out a trench with the sides of his shoes, scraping the dirt away and over the edge of the rock face. 

Ronan rounds the stone, picks up the rock they were using as a fulcrum, and then carries it back to the other side, dropping it six inches from the edge, hoping it will catch the weight of the whole thing before it plummets to the bottom. He really doesn’t want to have to find another rock this big and move it more than a foot. 

Both of the boys scramble back around and press their shoulders into the rock from their original side. It wobbles ponderously forward and then settles back into place again. They repeat this three more times before it finally tilts away from them enough for gravity to carry it forward. They hold their breath and watch as it grinds to a stop against the smaller rock. Chainsaw cries out and hops away from it, launching herself into the air and settling back down a few feet away. 

“Oh, thank god,” Adam says, in an entirely anticlimactic manner. 

Ronan nods in agreement. With their task behind them he lets himself finally observe the view Adam is so taken with. The trees dotting the hills around them are spare with late autumn foliage. Their scantily dressed skeletons shiver with gold and red and orange and brown. Their fire gives way to the blue-grey smoke of the mountains beyond. It’s spectacular. Ronan’s lived here his whole life, he might be as tied to this land as Adam is even with his bargain, and it still manages to surprise him. 

Then there’s Adam himself. Standing next to a stone that’s taller and wider than him and still looking like a giant surveying his kingdom. Adam too, is burning. Ronan’s not sure when it started, he’s merely glad the fire caught, for both of their sakes. Adam had needed something wild to burn his house down around him so that he could escape it and Ronan had needed the warmth. Not that either of them had known it at the time. 

Adam belongs here. It’s hard to ignore it. Hard now to picture him as a normal person with a mundane life who studies for Latin tests and pulls the pickles off his hamburgers and counts to a hundred every morning as he brushes his teeth. 

Ronan has spent enough time not being able to return home to last him his whole life. Some places are perfect and beautiful and full of what you know, but they’re only places. You can’t take places with you when you move on and Ronan knows that one day he’s going to move on. He can feel it coming just as surely as he knows that up close those far mountains look just like the one he’s standing on. Ronan needs homes he can carry with him. He needs homes that will sweep him away just as often as he sweeps them away. 

Fortunately, some people are also perfect and beautiful and full of what you know. Adam is Cabeswater. Adam has been transmuted into a person made not of bone and muscle and blood, but a person made of the trees Ronan has known his whole life. Their bark has replaced his skin making him stronger. Those blue flowers Ronan grabbed the first time he was pulled from a dream are hiding in Adam’s eyes. The rushing waterfalls are there in his pulse, cascading through him and carrying the magic he needs to stay grounded.

Ronan wants so badly to belong there. 

He doesn’t anticipate the kiss. Hadn’t been planning to pull Adam close and press his face into his neck and then run his lips across his chin and cheek before finding his hungry mouth. In fact, his brain doesn’t catch up with him until Adam is kissing him back. Panicked and feeling like he’s overstepped he tries to pull away, but Adam’s strong, sure fingers hold on to his waist like a tree clinging to the cliff face and he can’t do anything but let Adam invite him in. He accepts.


End file.
